The illusion of having "power now" can be taken to be real, but only the "bliss of now" can actually happen.
In yesterday's post, an excerpt from the SELF-Transformation Meditation Guide, Volume One referred to the master and secondary addictions of persons: the desire to control and therefore the desire to have the power to accomplish that control. Such a mindset gives desirability to the illusion of the "power of now." Is it possible, however, that what "the Now" really offers is not power but is the bliss that so many seek? Consider three examples. A man fights all week with the boss and on the way to a party on Friday night is preoccupied with the fight and with the troubling prospect of a future without employment. His mind is toggling between the fight in the past and a bleak, imagined future. A few drinks later, he's forgotten the past and the future and is firmly fixed in the moment. That same Friday, two food addicts are complaining in the restaurant about their week and about the slow service. When the food arrives, silence dominates except for the near-erotic sounds that accompany their tasting of the food. Another couple, worn out from their trying week, opt to spend their Friday evening in bed, having sex and ultimately enjoying their synchronized orgasms. What do those people have in common? All had racing, variable minds that were focusing on negatives in "the past" or on potential negatives in "their futures." But at a point, the "bliss of now" happened for each. Their various actions stopped their variable minds, the past and future were ignored, and they were truly brought to the now, to the present moment. Alcohol did the trick for the man at the party. Savory food did it for two others. At the moment of their simultaneous orgasms, the other couple had no past, no future, and were not even mindful (mind-full) of the present. All were out of their minds, so they were completely absorbed into the moment. That Present Moment, that Eternal Now, happens only when the mind stops once and for all. All five people in the examples had problems on their minds, and all wished for some power to control their situations that made them feel enslaved and powerless. But when they were drawn completely into the present moment, they knew no problem so they had no desire for power or control. They knew the bliss as they lost a sense even of time. In that "no time" place, even a sense of "now" disappeared. The power and control that persons seek shall never be real for it cannot be permanent. The fixations with the illusions of past and future are obviously never real. Even the sense of "now" fades away as the variable mind fades away. All addictions are intended to create a change that allows persons to escape from the past and from the future and to experience happiness now. Addictions fail since they provide a short-term fix. The real fix is realization. The thinking mind is burned away with the light of awareness, and in the absence of the thinking mind, the bliss happens. It need not happen as rarely as an alcoholic high, as infrequently as the opportunity to taste a gourmet's preparation, as occasionally as simultaneous orgasms. It can happen coutinuously when persons realize and are finally, once and for all, out of their minds. "Is realization about the abandonment of the pleasures of wine, food, and sex?" Hardly. It is about abandoning illusions. It is about abandonment of the frustrating instabilities and the constant shiftings of the false mind. It is about finding a permanent "solution" to what ails persons. Are you settling for temporary respites? Are you willing to take all seven of the steps outlined earlier in From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality) in order to fixate in that state of bliss? Please enter the silence of contemplation.
